Capítulo 6: Prelude 1 - For Whom the Bell Tolls, Part 3
"Hello ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Randall's Night Out Live!"
A voice emerged that broke Zachary's thought process, waking him up from the dark state he was plunged into.
"..."
「Her...!」
On his desk was an old radio pulsating with life.
It was then that he remembered that he was awaiting a broadcast about a talk show. Normally, it would be broadcasted on television or the internet, but both of these things were far out of reach in this house. It was only by God's will that Zachary was able to get a chance on listening to the show through the radio. He wasn't a big fan of them but this was one he awaited with eagerness.
Even after the thoughts he had, he brushed them away and moved forward. He could not strive for those colored days without a bit of positivity.
Grabbing the radio closer to his ear, he could hear the round of applause accompanied by occasional whistles and cheers from devoted fans griddling the sound of the broadcast. It was clear how beloved and popular this show was. The host constantly thanked the audience for the gracious welcoming ovation as they all died down after half a minute — the hype was real.
But Zachary could care less about all that, he wanted to skip the introductions and get right into the meat of the topic. That was how desperate he was.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome with me the beloved author of the hit series "Serena's Wonderland," and the novel releasing this fall "Stage-Set," Hye-mi Myung."
The broadcast changed its music for this would be the part where they would show the guest sitting beside the host, with another round of applause going on in the background.
He listened with great interest as the host shut his mouth and the woman began to talk for herself, expressing her thoughts about her inspirations, the world she sought to create, and the hardships she went through.
She was quite the star among young adults. Her stories weren't the type to appease young adults or teenagers (the teen romance with an ounce of fantasy that dominates that genre), yet they still managed to captivate a lot. That could be due to Myung, herself, being barely even thirty, so she understood what worked for her target audience as she was technically still part of them.
If all the world fell silent, Zachary would still listen to that woman.
That woman was just what he needed at a time like this, she was a true author of modern literature, the thing he had a knack for the most. She was just an average woman, nothing special about her at all, yet she had all that success. So even as Zachary's mind urged him to pursue his dreams to become like her one day, it pushed him back with thoughts about waiting to hear of her death like every other person he admired in a couple of years or so.
That was just how his mind was: an epitome of opposing conflicts.
"What do you think is your best work yet?" The host presented his question, "Or what novel are you most proud of?"
Zachary waited for an answer, like everyone else.
"I think… probably "And Thus, They Struck." It was definitely the most challenging one yet and one that I'm very proud of finishing." She answered. "There was one specific chapter that I struggled with and that's Chapter Fourteen, as you all might know if you've read the book. For some reason, I spent weeks stuck at that chapter, it was very frustrating to me — I almost scrapped the book altogether because of it and I'm glad I didn't. But as it turns out, all I had to do was step away and let my imagination do all the work, because one day I woke up with the entire scene fresh in my mind from my dream. It was unbelievable. Dreams are the stem of all imagination… and that's kinda what urged me to write "Stage-Set" after this book."
「Dreams, huh.」
The very thing he believed to not be true was supposed to be the key that could potentially pull him out of this misery. It was the key to throwing away the blockade that made his current goal unattainable. That was the solution he needed to come to terms with.
After the broadcast was over, he put the radio aside, gripped onto his pencil with all his might, and carefully dusted off the paper on the desk to make sure it was perfectly clean.
A white canvas for his art, for his world.
「What am I even doing?」
But his world did not grasp the elucidations of the real world. It was more so a satire of much deeper themes and fantasies, at least he strived to make it so.
"Shouldn't this be the time the protagonist gains an epiphany?" He questioned himself, slightly stepping away from the desk, contemplating much thought and watching the raindrops blistering onto the window. "Ha… Who am I kidding? The world is not a piece of fiction I can simply fiddle with. Protagonist this, protagonist that… a role like that wouldn't work for me."
It wasn't a mindset that every person was the protagonist of their own story and that he simply wasn't. No, far from it. He had an entirely different belief. Simply put: he did not care. Reality did not have the need for something so trivial and meaningless. The world moved whether one was acknowledged or not.
There are no protagonists in this world. Only creators.
And that was why he aimed to be one. An imagination so steep in the mind and imbued with vivid fantasies paved a great path for a creator. He wanted to follow it, he needed to follow it, otherwise, the other path set for him was to be eternally forced upon him.
"If only…"
Resting his head on the desk, he could hear and feel the droplets of rain reverberating in his ears as if something was bickering from below.
「I can just drift away.」
That was his call for a fantasy. His ambition reaching a stalemate, he simply wanted to dream; dream of the world that lied within his mind. Many times he brought his imagination forth in the form of words on paper but never was he actually able to fully realize it, even within a dream. But now… he longed for it the most, the salvation of divine manner.
It was then that he sought out to follow Myung's steps in his own way. He raised his head back up and grabbed a book of the same name mentioned in the broadcast — he was glad to have bought it before as he did not have all her works at that time — and opened it up to the chapter she mentioned.
Maybe within it, he could find the key he needed.
Looking at the novel, going through its pages again, and remembering its plot brought Zachary to thinking back about the incident at school earlier. The novel starred a teenage girl who encountered abnormal incidents after all. It was eerily similar to what was happening. But why should he bother? He thought. It was nothing out of the ordinary.
And that was when his mind kicked in and delved deeper.
Why was it not out of the ordinary? He thought back once again.
Occurrences of students, girls, passing out at school, specifically in front of the entrance, should never be considered ordinary at any point. It was common sense. But it didn't stop there. The strings of suicide that he heard so much about were certainly something that should make headlines in the town, yet barely anyone ever heard of them outside. For all his habits of avoiding conflicts, this was one he couldn't believe no one, not even himself, did not bother with. Everyone just moved on and lived as if nothing happened, as if it was all the norm.
「Have I stumbled upon a paranormal conspiracy?」
He chuckled quietly to himself, thinking of the absurdity of the situation.
Such a thing as the paranormal was not so far-fetched. This is a world governed by a great deity, a world of angels and demons, a world of life and afterlife, that much he knew but did not believe. Yet in his own manner, he strived for perfection that a hollow shell could not achieve, a beauty that did not exist within his knowledge. He was not one looking to be a big-shot, making money off his works.
Like any other person, he was once a child with a dream — and he wasn't going to let it go to naught after all of these years.
Putting those thoughts to rest, for now, he proceeded to read the rest of the chapter.
""It was a pond. A magnificent pond surrounded by light fog from all sides."" He read the first paragraph.
This chapter was supposed to revolve around the heroine wandering into a mysterious forest and meeting the maiden who would act as the catalyst for the novel's events.
""It looked neither natural nor artificial. Existing in a serene medium between nature and humanity it welcomed all with its warm water and calming light. It looked like a beacon from afar, shining its light through the dense forest beckoning all to embrace the silent water. Yes… it was silent for there were no fish to disturb its still form and no wind to guide its entropy. It was not surprising; these things are rare now. Within the forest of frozen trees and under the unmoving sky it rested as it always has.""
Before long Zachary found himself shutting his eyes as he read the lines, faced only with quivering darkness thereafter. Reading the story once again would not benefit him at all, which was why he wanted to understand how these words were formed, how they came to be from a mere dream. If he could materialize them within his own canvas of imagination, then maybe there was hope for him.
From just the memory of the rest of the chapter, he let his mind waver to its heart's content. It was no different than a canvas covered in black. White lines began to form around this void of a surface, slowly drawing and picturing a world of terrifying magnitude, a world only in one's mind. The dark picture with white faint details soon began to fade and a brighter image, a clear image, came in its place.
What appeared before him was no different than a scene in reality.
For once, he was able to realize a picture within his imagination. Normally such an achievement would cause one's heart to flutter in excitement after failure for so long, but he was not one to hold such customs. He valued the moment and needn't waste it on useless sentiments that cause a stir within the heart and mind.
There she was, Zachary could not believe his eyes, a maiden in the pond.
Her appearance was barely visible due to the mist surrounding her. But even from the silhouette, Zachary was able to tell how good of a shape she maintained with her body. She moved in a slow manner, seemingly bathing in the pond's warm water.
This was exactly what he needed, a scene out of his mind so vivid he could write into words.
He knew who this was: the Lady of the Lake, a very prominent character in the novel. Yet he couldn't formulate what she looked like exactly as she had no definite appearance in the story itself. That was the sole reason why he wanted to move forward, he wanted to see what his mind had hidden away from him, what this beautiful woman he always tried to imagine would actually look like in this dreamscape.
And then she began humming; humming a tune that was unfamiliar to him. It was soothing to the ears.
Zachary moved, slowly creeping his way to the pond and beyond the mist.
The chanting went on, her voice had turned from a young womanly voice to a beautiful voice worth a theater of audience.
"This is…"
This was the wonderful world buried deep within Myung's books, despite its dark imagery at times, fully realized within his imagination. This was the world he longed for the most: the bright-colored world, a world only those who have reached the dream could see and understand. Perhaps Myung was different, he thought. It could be she really was happy and content with her life. She was someone who understood very well the dark image of the world yet she managed to portray such an amazing world.
"If this is true, then I want it too. This is amazing!"
"What's amazing?"
Following that other feminine voice, the world went dark. Zachary opened his eyes. He was back in that warm outmoded room. No pond. No maiden. No song. Just a girl with a stern expression looking down on him.
He quickly covered his notes, preventing the girl from seeing them.
"What are you doing here?" He gave her a cold glare.
The girl before him was his cousin, almost three years older and in the same school as him — due to being held back a few years for an unspecified reason. Though she was a person he tried to avoid as much as possible, despite always listening to her words normally — he had to, she was family above all.
She had a fierce and threatening look in her eyes.
"Aunt Rose asked for you, it's time for dinner." She gave him a monotonous stare, one that would be given from one stranger to another. They might have been cousins, but they were far from being alike.
"I am not hungry." He looked the other way, "Piss off!"
That last line was enough to set her off.
She grit her teeth. "…you're just the same as ever."
As the frustration built up within her, she vented it out by slamming her elbow to the back of his head.
Zachary let out an audible grunt. "Hey, what the hell was that for?"
"Stop moping around and grow a pair. It's not like you do anything else," her expression was maddening. "Ungrateful prick..."
She was like everyone else in the household. No matter how hard they tried, there was no helping Zachary. They were all angered by his behavior and his rejection of everything. But unlike them, his cousin wasn't one to hide her emotions behind a facade.
"Get out…" He mumbled. "Shut up and get the hell out of here!" He tried not to raise his voice so as to not attract attention from anyone else in the house.
He stood up and glared at her with an irritated expression. But she was not the least bit afraid and glared back. However, there was no use to all of this. She knew he wouldn't listen.
"—Tch…"
She moved aside but kept looking at him from the corners of her eyes as she headed for the door, not letting go of the hostility within. Knowing her, she would probably report back to his mother and more trouble would stir up. But then again, he barely knew anything about her, there was no guarantee she would say anything — and no guarantee she wouldn't either.
But Zachary did not care.
「I'm tired」
Furious by the previous encounter, he sat back on the chair and struck his fist on the desk that it almost hurt. He wished to shun everyone out, to listen to no one but himself. They had no right to dictate his life, it was his own. However, he knew doing that would only drop ignorance upon him. There had to be boundaries to be set, otherwise, he wasn't going to make that far in this world.
「I'm really tired.」
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